Commentary on The Tollund Man

In the poem "The Tollund Man", Heaney explores what the Tollund man means to the Irish common people and then what it means to him as a poet. The "country people" or "turfcutters" as Heaney refers to the Irish community as, see the Tollund man as a type of saint, a holy figure that defines their identity. In the third stanza, the tollund man is referred to having a "saint's kept body" as the waters of "fen" have not devoured its victim but transfered the sacrificed, unidentified man into a saint. Whereas, this leads Heaney great shame as the Irish community, people that define who he is, cannot see the brutality and wrongness of the Tollund man. Heaney does not see him as a "saint", as one to be admired but as a murder due to unconventional religious beliefs. Heaney employs the metaphor of the "country people, Not knowing their tongue." to explain the common man illiteracy as they do not understand the archetype of the Tollund Man and what he truely represents.

Seamus Heaney - P.V Glob

Peter Vilhelm Glob was a Danish archaeologist. His most famous of investigations was of Denmark's bog bodies such as Tollund Man and Grauballe Man (mummified remains of Iron and Bronze Age people found preserved bogs)